…my blood was drawn. And this afternoon I got the result of my A1C (and of my chem 14, but I wasn’t nearly as anxious about that result).

At the end of December, my A1C was 10.2. That was the A1C that got my surgery cancelled. The A1C that legit scared me.

I’m pleased to report that as of this morning, my A1C is down.

It’s not 9.5.

It’s not 8.5.

Wait for it…

….

…

…

It’s 7.8!

You have no idea how excited I was to see that number. Especially since I know I didn’t apply myself nearly as much to the getting healthy process as I should’ve. But, as much as I blame the flu for me falling off the wagon of eating right and logging of food & blood sugar numbers, I’m thinking the flu actually deserves my thanks. See, I spent almost all of February sleeping, and when I ate, it wasn’t tons.

Now, I just have to try even harder to be good.

The only bad news? I’ve lost no weight. Zero. So, I’m sure that’s not going to thrill my doctor, but she should be happy about that 2.4 point (really hoping my mental math is right) drop of my A1C, right? Hopefully, this’ll keep me from having to go on insulin. Plus, since I’m below 8.0 my ob-gyn is going to be willing to consider doing my surgery again!!!!

If you’ve been here over the last month, you know that I’m starting the process of bringing my blood sugar down and getting my diabetes back into the realm of “Controlled.”

I’m making sure I’m taking my meds religiously (even though they make me feel like crap 24/7). Since January 8th, I’ve not had one sugar reading over 200. I’m seeming to stay between 120-140. I know there’s room for improvement, but considering that I was consistently in the 220-240 range a little over a month ago, I’m happy to be where I am.

Not only am I supposed to be lowering my blood sugar numbers, I’m also supposed to be losing weight.

And that’s not happening.

I’m stuck. I’ll lose 5 pounds, and then those five pounds immediately come back. And then I’ll lose them again, just to find them back a few days later. It’s a frustrating, brutal cycle.

I’m stressing out so much about the weight not cooperating (and stress is really, just about the best thing for blood sugar numbers…not!). I’ve only got until the end of March to show improvement, or I’m facing insulin.

I don’t want to go on insulin! It’s not even something I can afford to think about having to do.

So, that’s my quandary. How do I get the weight to come off and stop coming back? It’s not like this is a new challenge, either. I’ve been fighting this losing weight battle for so long now, I’m at my wit’s end.

Um…no. I’m sorry to burst anyone’s bubble, but the “special contact mask” does NOT distract attention from the fact that I’m literally pushing a freaking needle into my finger. Y’know what would be great? How about a button that triggers the needle, instead of some fancy extra bit of plastic that has a ridiculous, super-impressed with itself name? There are days that I find myself staring at my fingers going, “Which one of you is gonna be the victim?” and then it takes me minutes to talk myself into pushing the needle into my finger. Sometimes the fact my stupid fat fingers require me to not use fine lancets make me truly sad.

I have 3 months, kids. 3 months to make good progress on my weight and my A1c, and keep my doctor from putting me on insulin. That may seem like a lot of time, but trust me, it’s not. And I’m terrified and overwhelmed.

It wasn’t until tonight that it really hit just how much this is. I went to the doctor this morning, and I was 100% there, completely motivated to make this happen. However, as the day has worn on, I’ve found myself wanting to run and hide from this reality. I don’t want this to be reality. I’ve been trying to keep it from being reality for nearly six years.

So, I had my last pizza, for the present foreseeable fiture, and went to a movie with my girlfriends. We were a bit loud, a bit inappropriate, but we laughed so much and it was just the best. Then, I came home and the true enormity of all this just hit.

I wish I could just hop in the car and drive across the state to where the boy is working this week. I wish he was sitting here, telling me that I’ve got this. That I can do this. For now, I just have to accept that text messages and phone calls are going to get me through until Friday, and thank God that he’s not gone more than he is.

Also, if anyone can explain the Mediterranean diet to me, that’d be super helpful. Because apparently I’m supposed to be on it, and Pinterest and Google are only serving to overwhelm and confuse me even more regarding it. The only thing they seem to agree on, is that I should be using small, colorful tomatoes in all my cooking. Which is concerning since I only like tomatoes pureed and mixed with a ton of sugar and vinegar.

Okay, so Metformin is the medicine I have to take for my diabetes/pcos. It’s supposed to help both things. I’m not sure it does, but I’m taking the pill anyway. I am sure that it hates me.

On a good day, I take it and just feel a bit off. The way you feel when you’re about to come down with something, but you aren’t truly sick yet. However, on a bad day, things get ugly.

And the bad days are far more frequent than the good days

Here’s a bad round with Metformin. It acts like I’ve come down with a stomach bug. I get achy (head and all over), lightheaded and dizzy, hot, exhausted, everything in me liquifies and comes out the southern end accompanied by intense abdominal pain, and then there’s the nausea. So much freaking nausea. The good news is, I only feel this way the first 12-24 hours after I’ve taken my meds. Usually, by the time it’s time to take my next dose (24 hours later) these symptoms have abated. Just in time, to start the whole process all over.

Believe me, I’ve tried to appease the Metformin deities. It doesn’t matter if I make good food choices or bad, it doesn’t matter if I’ve been in constant motion or just been a sedentary rock for the day. This med just hates me, so very much.

I’ve told every doctor I’ve seen about how the Metformin hates me, and I pretty much always get the sane response, “Well, you have diabetes and pcos, and this is the med we prescribe for both those things.” My ob-gyn’s solution was taking me off the non-extended release form and putting me on extended release (er) so that I take it at night, before bed, and will sleep through the worst of it. Some nights this works, and then some nights are like last night.

Last night, I took my medicine and headed to bed. Instead of waiting for me to fall asleep, the stomach pain started and I knew I needed a distraction, because sleep was probably not going to happen for a while. So, I hopped on Hearthstone, and it mostly kept me focused away from the pain. Then, though, I got into competitive mode.

I’ve been playing Hearthstone super casually for over a year. Mostly, I only played when the boy had a quest he needed to complete and it required playing against a friend, or having your game be observed by a friend. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I learned about ranked play. I knew that there were professional players, considered the best, but I hadn’t a clue how they had become ranked. Did the game just log that they played a ton? It was genuinely a mystery. Then the boy received an in-game reward, and when I questioned how he had gotten it, he explained that I could actually play and get ranked and vet free stuff. I like free stuff. I felt so dumb for not having figured this out on my own.

So, last night, I was actually doing pretty decently and making my rank slowly crawl up, and I got a little sucked into the game. At one point it suddenly dawned on me that when I’ve seen pictures of the best Hearthstone players, they’re all male. And suddenly, something inside me was very annoyed. Brcause I know I’m not the only female who plays the game. Which made me then more determined to climb the rankings. Maybe it was because it was the middle of the night, but suddenly I was rambling to the boy about how this game needed way more female representation on the leader board, and I really think I should make it a goal to be one of those females. And he, being the supportive husband went, “Ok, babe.” Which may not read supportive, but it totally was.

And then it was 3 a.m., and I was finally so tired, it outweighed my abdominal misery.

I slept for four hours, woke up and had a half-hour of quality time with the bathroom and my angry tummy, and then decided to share my pain and craziness with all of you.

Weirdly, that late night fervour I suddenly felt to excel at Hearthstone, didn’t pass like the contents of my stomach did. I’m awake, exhausted, but awake, and I still want to try to see if I can become, if not a top player, a really awesome player. (Wow, that sentence had a ton of commas. Believe it or not, I actually excelled in grammar back in high school.)

So, I just had a meltdown about brownies. I genuinely hope you had a better night than that.

And, it’s not even really about the brownies. It kind of is (I really love brownies, and the brownies that started my falling apart were filled with cream cheese and homemade), but it’s about so much more. It’s about my bruised fingertips, it’s about no longer being able to turn to food when I’m stressed, and it’s about having to stop avoiding my diabetes. I’ve gotten really good at avoiding it, but I feel like I’ve reached this point where if I don’t grow up and get my disease under control truly bad things are going to happen much sooner than I’d like.

Because I spent my evening in a funk, I didn’t even think to share my video. So, first, it needs so explaining.

Last week, I was wandering on the internet, and I stumbled across video for this product, the Rollie Eggmaster, that can make eggs pretty quick. I was immediately intrigued, because I really need to be eating some kind of healthy breakfast, and most mornings I just don’t have the time as I have to feed the animals, take the dog out, and get my butt to work. I found the product on Amazon, and it was cheap-ish,so I decided to try it.

It arrived on Thursday, and Friday morning I used it for the first time…and here’s how it turned out:

It’s okay, I know what you’re thinking,”Egg penis eggrection.” You’re also probably wondering what that bag-looking thing on top is. First, the bag looking thing is actually just egg white that didn’t make it all the way to the bottom of the cooking chamber. Second, yes, yes that is an egg penis.

I sent that video to a friend, and her response was, “That’s terrifying. I suddenly feel I need to file a sexual harassment charge against your breakfast…”

In case you were wondering, it doesn’t just make egg penises; it also makes pb & j sandwich penises, pizza penises, burger penises, the food penis options are almost endless

All joking aside, it really did work and did what I needed it to. Yes, it’s a bit weird, and yes, I’ll probably giggle like a teenager everytime I use the thing; but it’s nice to have an option for breakfast that’s quick and healthy.

When we driving home from my in-laws on Christmas Eve I had this thought enter my brain, “Next year, there might be three of us.” And for the next 48 hours I was in a pretty happy, pretty hopeful place.

No, I’m not pregnant. I didn’t think I was. But, there was this smidgen (and boy ,do I mean smidgen) of a chance, that in the next year I might be.

So here’s the deal, last Wednesday, I was supposed to have a surgery. My doctor was going to shrink my stupid giant ovaries down to normal size by cutting wedges out of them. There was no guarantee, but there was this chance that it’d undo a lot of my PCOS mess. There was a chance that I’d actually be able to make some progress on the weight loss front. There was even a chance that it’d make me a little less insulin resistant. There was a chance it’d make the mystery pain go away, and that it would lessen my mood swings. And…there was this chance that I could get pregnant and stay pregnant. I was so excited. I was weirdly calm. I think I was so desperate for just one of those many things to be a little bit better that it outweighed the anxiety and fear I was also experiencing.

And then I went to my pre-op last Tuesday…

Picture it…9 a.m. the day after Christmas. I got to my appointment, and things promptly went downhill. My first warning sign came when I was going through my paperwork, verifying that they had my info correct, and noticed that they had down the doctor from my work’s employee health clinic down as my primary doctor (she’s nice and I have seen her in the last year, but she’s not my primary doctor, or even my ob-gyn). I pointed this out, and the receptionist told me that she wasn’t able to change that, and that someone in the surgery center would need to fix it on the day of my surgery. I remember feeling confused as to why she’d asked me to check to make sure everything was correct if she couldn’t actually change any of it.

I then got taken into the exam room. Both the nurse and the anesthesiologist were either really annoyed they had to work the day after Christmas, or were super hungover, or both. I just know that they were both in bad moods, and every time I tried to be even a little funny I got death glares from both parties. First, the anesthesiologist was upset with me because of my diabetes and my difficulty keeping my blood sugars down. Then, she was annoyed that I’m overweight. To make it a trifecta, I frustrated her because I snore so I must have sleep apnea and I really need to be getting that treated. I should probably be undergoing a sleep study (at least, according to her). If I hadn’t been stressed and anxious before, I was at that point. A great way to feel the day before surgery. More than once the anesthesiologist informed me that I was ONLY having an elective procedure and I really wasn’t in any condition to have any elective procedure. I kept thinking, “I’m not here for bigger boobs. You know those things that you’re really frustrated and annoyed with me about? This is a procedure that could actually make those things better.”

They drew my blood. The anesthesiologist gave me many print outs (all about the health problems that she had concerns about), gave me another lecture about how I really shouldn’t be having an elective procedure, and I went home, my calm now tinged with a small amount of dread.

That evening, I was about to go flush out my system (yeah, that’s as nasty as it sounds), and I got a phone call. From my doctor. And it started with her saying, “I’m so sorry, I was so sad when I heard about tomorrow. I was really looking forward to seeing you.” (I should mention here that my doctor is a beautiful, kind, sweet woman who genuinely gives a crap and actually listens to me and I kind of love her.)

To which I replied, “What about tomorrow?” Dread amount was no longer in the small category.

“Didn’t the hospital call you? They said they called you.”

“No, they didn’t call me.”

Turns out that blood draw (the one that a week later I still have a bruise from), sent a result back that the anesthesiologist didn’t like. And just like that, my surgery was cancelled. The hospital called my doctor while she was performing someone else’s surgery, and left her a message regarding the cancellation. They gave me no chance to redo the tests, or to fight to stay on the schedule.

I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. The sliver of hope that maybe, just maybe something was finally going to get fixed in my body, was gone, at least for now. I cried all that night. I cried the better part of surgery day. And then, I think my body just ran out of tears. It’s now been a week, and I’m still hanging in there. I’m disappointed that I have to shelve the surgery for now. However, it’s not like it’ll never happen, and even if it doesn’t, it’s not the end of the world. I have an amazing husband, adorable pets, precious nephews and a niece, and a collection of graphic novels that should keep me entertained for the next two years (possibly more, it’s amazing how cheap you can get them on Ebay. The boy need not know how much I’m adding to our already large collection…).

And for now, I’m going to refuse to give up hoping that someday, in the future, I’m going to be a better, healthier me.